Guild Wars 2

TL;DR so this may duplicate somebody else.

I have crafted multiple ascended armors.
You can gather metals, and I tend to get a boatload salvaging. Never had a problem there. Wood for weapons same.
Leathers can’t be gathered but are not too hard to get. Prices are a bit high on some. I would suppose that this is because they are less crafted and Leather is NOT used by all armors like Damask is, but can bring no evidence.

Fabrics, across the board are hardest to get. All but Jute really hurt to purchase.

It is not just the 3 to 1 for bolts it is also the 100 for 1 for Weaving Thread making 300 silk scraps, whereas Thick Elonian Cords and Mithrillium only need 50 refined and thus 150 of their base ingredient.

For anyone trying to get Tailor crafting to 500 these fabric issues are a double whammy, brutal expense to level then 36 Bolts of Damask to craft the armor, almost 50% more Damask than the other classes.

Whatever the policy maker’s intent was in creating this situation and then doing nothing to redress it, it is really grossly unfair to all the light armor classes.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

you only think that because we have lots of cows to kill

insanemaniac.2456:

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

you only think that because we have lots of cows to kill

Turkey is far too lean to be ground, hence the heresy!
Sandwich meat? Yes.
Roasted? Yes.
Ground? How dare you!

mtpelion.4562:

insanemaniac.2456:

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

you only think that because we have lots of cows to kill

Turkey is far too lean to be ground, hence the heresy!
Sandwich meat? Yes.
Roasted? Yes.
Ground? How dare you!

That’s a fair point, but I think maybe you’re really protecting your interests in the ground meat market by making spuriously unrelated claims. I’m watching you.

Wait, no, this is about silk. =P

Granted, unless someone has any better ideas on sustainably curbing silk prices or making damask production less of a chore, we might be better off talking about delicious luncheon meats.

JakHammer.7094:

TL;DR so this may duplicate somebody else.

I have crafted multiple ascended armors.
You can gather metals, and I tend to get a boatload salvaging. Never had a problem there. Wood for weapons same.
Leathers can’t be gathered but are not too hard to get. Prices are a bit high on some. I would suppose that this is because they are less crafted and Leather is NOT used by all armors like Damask is, but can bring no evidence.

Fabrics, across the board are hardest to get. All but Jute really hurt to purchase.

It is not just the 3 to 1 for bolts it is also the 100 for 1 for Weaving Thread making 300 silk scraps, whereas Thick Elonian Cords and Mithrillium only need 50 refined and thus 150 of their base ingredient.

For anyone trying to get Tailor crafting to 500 these fabric issues are a double whammy, brutal expense to level then 36 Bolts of Damask to craft the armor, almost 50% more Damask than the other classes.

Whatever the policy maker’s intent was in creating this situation and then doing nothing to redress it, it is really grossly unfair to all the light armor classes.

yes clothcraft has always been a fairly bad proposition due to it being used for all armor recipes. then ascended takes the same bad formula and makes it worse by doubling the amount required.

mtpelion.4562:

insanemaniac.2456:

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

you only think that because we have lots of cows to kill

Turkey is far too lean to be ground, hence the heresy!
Sandwich meat? Yes.
Roasted? Yes.
Ground? How dare you!

Cuisine experts pallettes suffer the most in hard times, but people gotta eat burgers and meatballs

phys.7689:

yes clothcraft has always been a fairly bad proposition due to it being used for all armor recipes. then ascended takes the same bad formula and makes it worse by doubling the amount required.

Triple, actually. 2→3 scraps and 50→100 for one ascended grade material.
Triple. On top of being used for every armor class.
Which really makes me wonder if there could be an accurate model the scenario of returning silk to equate with the other recipes.

Rauderi.8706:

phys.7689:

yes clothcraft has always been a fairly bad proposition due to it being used for all armor recipes. then ascended takes the same bad formula and makes it worse by doubling the amount required.

Triple, actually. 2->3 scraps and 50->100 for one ascended grade material.
Triple. On top of being used for every armor class.
Which really makes me wonder if there could be an accurate model the scenario of returning silk to equate with the other recipes.

well for metal its triple, for leather its double

None of that matters, why does damask STILL take 100 bolts of silk and the other ascended mats take 50 of their material? It made sense when silk scraps were worth nothing, it doesn’t anymore. Damask is basically 4x the price of every other ascended mat.

Spider shortage mate.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I’d call that a win.

Part of the rancor about silk is the indirect, semi-RNG nature of it. While it’s possible to ‘farm’ for it by waiting on drops, there isn’t yet a way to roam from map to map and grab it reliably. We’ve cracked jokes in another thread about looting laundry lines for cloth drops, but I don’t consider it a terrible idea.

Shiyo.3578:

None of that matters, why does damask STILL take 100 bolts of silk and the other ascended mats take 50 of their material? It made sense when silk scraps were worth nothing, it doesn’t anymore. Damask is over 4x the price of every other ascended mat.

As explained because Damask is required at all armor weights, double for light. That amplifies the amount of raw material needed to craft it versus the other ascended crafted mats. If Elonian Leather was needed in quantity on all armor weights, double for medium, leather prices would also be much higher. But it’s not so it’s a lot less expensive.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I’d rather just be able to use Leather to craft Insignias so that cloth comes down and leather goes up until they hit parity (which won’t necessarily be an identical price point). I’m fine with the indirect acquisition of cloth and leather as it forces players to interact with the TP if they want to hurry up production, unlike with ore and logs where a player can hurry up production by simply touring maps and hitting nodes.

EDIT: and wild rants are great for diffusing hostile-leaning conversations, assuming they don’t carry on, so I’d argue that they can be used to acquire good feedback!

Shiyo.3578:

None of that matters, why does damask STILL take 100 bolts of silk and the other ascended mats take 50 of their material? It made sense when silk scraps were worth nothing, it doesn’t anymore. Damask is basically 4x the price of every other ascended mat.

Because anet cannot, and should not be changin recipes willy-nilly just because a handful of people take issue with it. If they did, this game would have been a clusterkitten within a month.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

Worse, definitely far worse. Places like Silverwastes was a good step, and balance, in the direction of price management. Unfortunately, it’s an issue when such methods also bring in an influx of other items. That can cause a price drop across the board, leaving earnings and expenditures basically the same as they were before, or worse.

Additionally, tinkering with recipes is also undesirable, in either direction. Yes, it reduces the silk needs, but it also crashes the cost of silk. Silk costing a couple silver IS a good thing. It actually has value. Leather? I get more value out of vendoring it than I do putting it up on the trade post. Mithril I get value out of by turning it into weapon inscriptions.

All in all, I think one of the better “solutions” offered so far, was the material-specific AND craft specific insignias. This would allow deldrimor ingots to be used in a heavy armor, leather insignia in medium, same with cloth. Also while preventing a massive influx of cheap insignias for all armor thanks to the currently dirt cheap leather prices.

Rauderi.8706:

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I’d call that a win.

Part of the rancor about silk is the indirect, semi-RNG nature of it. While it’s possible to ‘farm’ for it by waiting on drops, there isn’t yet a way to roam from map to map and grab it reliably. We’ve cracked jokes in another thread about looting laundry lines for cloth drops, but I don’t consider it a terrible idea.

From my personal PoV, agreed. Currently, farming all cloth feels like taking a truckload of sand and pouring through a sifter, hoping to find the right kind of buried treasure. The time spent collecting the sand makes the process feel that much more disheartening. At least, if I knew at the end of it all that I was definitely getting an amount of cloth (of whatever tier, even though I know this thread started with silk), it would feel more satisfying. I recently spent a couple of 2 hour sessions in Timberline Falls, finishing up map completion. Killed most all mobs, did some events, finished the map. At the end of the 2 sessions, I had managed to get a total of 2 cotton scraps, and 3 linen scraps. Map completion, thankfully, awarded 40 linen scraps, but that is a one time deal. 3 scraps from RNG after 4 hours… that’s kitten.

Edit: We currently have a system some view as less than ideal, but I would strongly object to any change that would make matters worse. Better bad than worse.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

depends what you mean by slowly

but if you mean something like 5-10 scraps a day, no that wouldnt really change much regarding how obtaining silk feels with regards to crafting ascended

This isnt really just about silks base price, its about its price compared to other t5 materials/t6 materials and a general imbalance in the amount of work it takes to craft damask as well as an imbalance in the amount of work it takes to make cloth ascended versus other ascendeds.

The reason silks price feels so bad is because you need so much of it, and so much of it compared to other similar uses in other recipes. If you didnt need 300 silk per day people probably wouldnt care too much.

The issue is the price/cost/time of obtaining silk for ascended crafting specifically because it is unbalanced compared to other ascended crafts, and the recipes treat them as if they should be equal in value.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Because ANet cannot, and should not be changing recipes willy-nilly just because a handful of people take issue with it.

But the recipes were already changed once. I won’t accuse of ‘willy-nilly’, since silk had no value, but it’s happened twice in easy memory (the other with soft wood planks). That kind of material control doesn’t feel right. It might work, but it dings player trust and leaves them wondering what will be the next material to get the treatment and spurs hoarding and speculation.

Worse, definitely far worse. Places like Silverwastes was a good step, and balance, in the direction of price management. Unfortunately, it’s an issue when such methods also bring in an influx of other items. That can cause a price drop across the board, leaving earnings and expenditures basically the same as they were before, or worse.

Foxfire says hello, along with all those vendored elder wood logs. Though, funny enough, if part of the Maudry chain had just been Enchanted Mulch (quest item + 100 elder wood planks + etc) instead of plant food, the price hit may have been mitigated somewhat.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Shiyo.3578:

None of that matters, why does damask STILL take 100 bolts of silk and the other ascended mats take 50 of their material? It made sense when silk scraps were worth nothing, it doesn’t anymore. Damask is basically 4x the price of every other ascended mat.

Because anet cannot, and should not be changin recipes willy-nilly just because a handful of people take issue with it. If they did, this game would have been a clusterkitten within a month.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

Worse, definitely far worse. Places like Silverwastes was a good step, and balance, in the direction of price management. Unfortunately, it’s an issue when such methods also bring in an influx of other items. That can cause a price drop across the board, leaving earnings and expenditures basically the same as they were before, or worse.

Additionally, tinkering with recipes is also undesirable, in either direction. Yes, it reduces the silk needs, but it also crashes the cost of silk. Silk costing a couple silver IS a good thing. It actually has value. Leather? I get more value out of vendoring it than I do putting it up on the trade post. Mithril I get value out of by turning it into weapon inscriptions.

All in all, I think one of the better “solutions” offered so far, was the material-specific AND craft specific insignias. This would allow deldrimor ingots to be used in a heavy armor, leather insignia in medium, same with cloth. Also while preventing a massive influx of cheap insignias for all armor thanks to the currently dirt cheap leather prices.

they change recipes all whenever they wish, silk is an example, it went from 2 silk to 3 silk. They also create recipes when they want.

the problem with making it craft specific, is you still have cloth sucking.

John Smith.4610:

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

Actually, with using the Karma armor forging trick (which Gaile confirmed with me as a legal method), you can farm specific cloth types all you want, albeit slowly. With this method, I’ve farmed hundreds of Cotton, Wool, and Linen scraps in the past week. A lot of people do this, and the price has remain pretty steady. The Supply kept pace with Demand. If Anet were to introduce even more ways to farm specific cloth materials, then we’d have an oversupply, and would have more of an impact on prices.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I think reducing the some of the randomness would be beneficial and make it so players can feel like they are making consistent progress rather than the hit and miss nature of salvaging

So I finished crafting all 3 sets to share across my characters. I used 3 scraps per bolt recipe. If it reverts back to two bolts…. who’s gonna compensate me??? just saying

SilverThorn.5047:

So I finished crafting all 3 sets to share across my characters. I used 3 scraps per bolt recipe. If it reverts back to two bolts…. who’s gonna compensate me??? just saying

No one. That is how patches and balancing works.

dietzero.3514:

SilverThorn.5047:

So I finished crafting all 3 sets to share across my characters. I used 3 scraps per bolt recipe. If it reverts back to two bolts…. who’s gonna compensate me??? just saying

No one. That is how patches and balancing works.

It’s the price of early adoption. The extra scraps were the cost of more time spent snuggling your Ascended armor.

[entitle] Because who’s going to compensate all the silk I vendored when it was worthless and then they sprung ascended on us? ;_; [/entitle]

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

That sounds pointless, unless you plan on bringing everything else up to silk’s cost…

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I don’t think that would solve the issue. People are upset not only because of the amount of silk needed, but the costs and time involved as well. If you add in a reliable way to get a few scraps a day, this would reduce some of the cost, but take much longer using such a method only. Plus if the prices don’t change, then you will reduce the costs invloved a little bit, but not enough to make it balanced. At most it would offest the price by a couple of gold max, but again at the cost of increasing the time. It would still be more expensive to craft light ascended than the other armor weights. (which is the main concern).

So it would help a little bit, but not nearly enough to satisfy those who are concerned about the costs and amount of materials needed.

One thing many players do is underestimate the velocity of the market in game. A tiny increase in individual output will cascade into larger implications due to the quantity of new Supply.

dietzero.3514:

SilverThorn.5047:

So I finished crafting all 3 sets to share across my characters. I used 3 scraps per bolt recipe. If it reverts back to two bolts…. who’s gonna compensate me??? just saying

No one. That is how patches and balancing works.

Lets balance it the other way. Double the requirements for t5 leather and ore.

Otherwise its a big Kitten you to everyone who has already made their gear.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

Agreed – ground turkey is amazing! I eat turkey burgers (sans bun) 3-4 nights a week!

So are we talking something along the lines of daily reset open world plant fiber nodes? About as rare as T6 nodes perhaps? I would be all for that as a way to target cloth specifically in exchange for the removal/reduction of dropped “garment” type items and / or number of cloth scraps from salvage.

John Smith.4610:

Again this feels to me like two separate issues. One of price, one DIRECT availability, meaning you go obtain an item, you do not go obtain an intermediary item and exchange it for the item you’re looking for.

I’m having trouble buying your assertion that the two issues are independent. Many proponents of the existing system have repeatedly made the claim that the system works precisely because you go to obtain an intermediary item (gold) and exchange it for the item you’re looking for (silk). If silk were available from a vendor for a fixed price then I would agree that the two issues are separate.

However, that’s not how the system works. There is no silk cartel in GW2 (that I’m aware of). Most players that I have spoken with simply match the lowest sell price on the TP at any given time when listing items. However, a certain percentage of players is always willing to undercut the current price. For this reason, as the surplus increases so does the number of undercutters.

The high demand for silk has completely eroded the surplus. This is why leather goes for coppers while silk goes for silvers. In other words, the price is a function of direct availability. I don’t understand how you can claim that the two issues (price and direct availability) are separate.

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Out of curiosity, what if they did introduce a changed insignia recipe, one that takes 1 each of the cloth materials, in a similar method to what the weapon inscriptions have? It’d shift focus off damask a little bit, and provide, at minimum, a meager bump in value for leather and deldrimor.

Something else I’d like to see is a way to convert the materials into other tX materials. Toss a stack in the forge with other stuff, get a chance of getting X amount of one of the other three back. Sort of a horizontal material promotion. It’d be chaos on the market for a while, but it would (should) sort itself out pretty quickly among all the material tiers.

Any change to demand for elonian leather (by making it a substitute for deldrimor or damask in some recipes), will create another problem:
While the is abundant t5 leather (12.5 million sections) t2-t4 leather only has supply between 130-200k.

So while there is enough supply of t5 leather to craft 83k elonian leather, there is only enough t4 leather to craft 4k elonian leather.

So Anet would have to adjust faucets for those lower tier leather as well in order to get a long term solution.

I am not a big fan of cross promotion (making cloth out of leather, bloods out of totems) because it greatly reduces the diversity of the in game economy. You might as well just fuse all mats of the same tiers for common, fine and rare mats into 1 item.
I dont think that is a good idea.
I also dont like demotion in the mf (making silk out of gossamer or platinum out of mithril) because the expensive price of some mid tier mats is a good way to transfer some gold from end game players to newer players, that level their first toon and get lots of those drops. And it also gives an incentive for veterans to play in lower level maps.

most likely rugged leather will go up somewhat in value at some point metal, or cloth will become competetive overall, then people will use those mats.

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

Its fine if everyone uses leather, or mithril, until the economy balances out
as far as what problems it would solve? It would even out the timegate
it would likely increase the value of leather and decrease the value of silk, with mithril and metals as an option you can get yourself if you really want to.

as for leather users having to take twice as long, no, they would just use the other materials.
so silk users might use silk/leather
leather might use mithril/leather
metal might use metal/leather

if whoever ends up with the cheapest method for both, and wants to use that material, he can, but takes twice as long.

But light armor users already have the chance now to pay more gold and circumvent the timegate. So i dont know how this changes anything, except bringing the overall price of ascended armor down. And we have yet to establish, if that is something Anet tries to do, which I doubt.
If it gets too cheap and too fast to acquire, the timegate on laurels (and dust/shards/dragonite) kicks in.
If common mats for ascended crafting are being created faster than they can be used, their value will go down the drain.

Bernie.8674:

John Smith.4610:

Again this feels to me like two separate issues. One of price, one DIRECT availability, meaning you go obtain an item, you do not go obtain an intermediary item and exchange it for the item you’re looking for.

I’m having trouble buying your assertion that the two issues are independent. Many proponents of the existing system have repeatedly made the claim that the system works precisely because you go to obtain an intermediary item (gold) and exchange it for the item you’re looking for (silk). If silk were available from a vendor for a fixed price then I would agree that the two issues are separate.

However, that’s not how the system works. There is no silk cartel in GW2 (that I’m aware of). Most players that I have spoken with simply match the lowest sell price on the TP at any given time when listing items. However, a certain percentage of players is always willing to undercut the current price. For this reason, as the surplus increases so does the number of undercutters.

The high demand for silk has completely eroded the surplus. This is why leather goes for coppers while silk goes for silvers. In other words, the price is a function of direct availability. I don’t understand how you can claim that the two issues (price and direct availability) are separate.

No, he’s saying that there are two separate issues the complaints are based on. Either your core complaint is the price of Silk, or your complaint is the direct availability of Silk.

So in the case of it being available – If you were given a direct source to farm Silk, but the price remained the same as it is, would you still complain?

The opposite would be – If the price were low, but you didn’t have a direct source to farm Silk, would you still complain?

JakHammer.7094:

For anyone trying to get Tailor crafting to 500 these fabric issues are a double whammy, brutal expense to level then 36 Bolts of Damask to craft the armor, almost 50% more Damask than the other classes.

Tailoring is the cheapest of all armorcrafts to level from 0-500 atm.
Only a few gold, but still the cheapest.

azurrei.5691:

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.

Agreed – ground turkey is amazing! I eat turkey burgers (sans bun) 3-4 nights a week!

Its not the turkey that makes you strong, its the hormones they add to their feed. But usually, you dont feel that strength building up due to all the antibiotics they also add.
While I was working (as a chef) in Boston about 12 years ago, my girlfriend was in the US Track and Field Team and preparing to go to the Olympics in Athens. She failed a drug test. Her hormone levels were too high and they traced it back to some turkey she ate the day before the test.

Wanze.8410:

azurrei.5691:

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.

Agreed – ground turkey is amazing! I eat turkey burgers (sans bun) 3-4 nights a week!

Its not the turkey that makes you strong, its the hormones they add to their feed. But usually, you dont feel that strength building up due to all the antibiotics they also add.
While I was working (as a chef) in Boston about 12 years ago, my girlfriend was in the US Track and Field Team and preparing to go to the Olympics in Athens. She failed a drug test. Her hormone levels were too high and they traced it back to some turkey she ate the day before the test.

This is why you should stick to non-GMO turkey from Whole Foods. Studies show that humans were much healthier thousands of years ago, because they ate all natural vegetables, and meats from free roaming animals they hunted.

John Smith.4610:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wanze.8410:

azurrei.5691:

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.

Agreed – ground turkey is amazing! I eat turkey burgers (sans bun) 3-4 nights a week!

Its not the turkey that makes you strong, its the hormones they add to their feed. But usually, you dont feel that strength building up due to all the antibiotics they also add.
While I was working (as a chef) in Boston about 12 years ago, my girlfriend was in the US Track and Field Team and preparing to go to the Olympics in Athens. She failed a drug test. Her hormone levels were too high and they traced it back to some turkey she ate the day before the test.

This is why you should stick to non-GMO turkey from Whole Foods. Studies show that humans were much healthier thousands of years ago, because they ate all natural vegetables, and meats from free roaming animals they hunted.

Nope, the antibiotics keep me healthy and the hormones are like steroids so get more gainz. I need EXTRA modified turkey!

So it’s confirmed that you’re part of the consumer base that demands the mythical 6 legged turkey.

Ahem

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

That seems like a specific question for a broad issue. Here is what I would like to see:

1. For all tier basic mats to have roughly the same cost on the TP. That is, allowing for minor fluctuations here and there, Silk Bolts should have the same TP cost as Mithril Ingots and Cured Thick Leather Squares, on average.

2. That materials would have a TP price in which each tier is valued higher than the previous tier, such that Gossamer is always more expensive than Silk per unit, Silk more than Linen, Linen more than Cotton, etc.

3. That the cost of materials within a tier are always reasonable for players who have naturally leveled to the point where those materials are of value. That is, that if you are of the level to wear Linen-made clothing, you should be able to easily afford the materials to have leveled your crafting to 250 Tailoring and make a full set of Winged gear.

I don’t know what your own philosophy is, but to my mind it makes absolutely no sense at all that you would allow prices to be where they are currently at without taking significant steps to adjust prices, either by adjusting the supply of unusually common/rare goods, or the demand for them (by adjusting how many are needed and by what recipes). To reach this point, if necessary, there could be one-time cash dumps, in which it is made clear to the players that the intended price point will fall considerably, but you will buy up their remaining stocks at a current market value (or allow them to trade it in for items of equivalent value).

Once the prices have reached this point of equilibrium, steps must be taken to maintain it. Any time an action is taken which would reduce the natural supply of the material in the world (like an enemy that drops it is removed), an alternate supply must be provided elsewhere, or the recipes that need it should be trimmed. Any time an action is taken which would increase the supply (like a new source starts dropping it), the opposite should be true.

Likewise, any time that demand for a mat is greatly increased (like new recipes are added that require large amounts of the stuff), the supply should be increased accordingly. If it’s intended to be a change that would permanently increase demand, then a permanent increase in supply would be needed. If the change would be more temporary, a “silk rush” as players spend 250 each to craft a single new item, then the supply boost could be tied to more temporary content, like a single event that raises supply considerably for a month or so.

This is not rocket surgery.

It’s more along the lines of brain science.

Anet may have internal specs on where they believe each item should be valued at. That doesn’t mean all T5 needs to be the same, or that all T6 should be the same. Through their data, they can correctly predict where each item value falls. It’s not through code changes that made Powerful Venom Sacs fall in value, while Elaborate Totems increased. It’s through players as a whole who changed metas, therefore changed demand for certain materials.

Right now for Ascended crafting, you need T2, T3, and T4 mats to go along with the refinement of T7 mats. This is why Wool and Linen out-value Silk. Players made it as such, but Anet theorized that the price fluctuations would happen. A side effect to this is new players with low level characters are able to make money by selling drops on the TP for higher values.

No one should approach the GW2 economy with a fine tooth comb, and attempt to suggest the perfect market. Once you do that, you move more towards a Communistic approach, where Anet decides how much of each mat you get and how much you a special merchant will pay for them, than a Capitalism one that allows us players to determine prices on our own.

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium.

Do you think the alteration of the number of silk scraps required per bolt could be perceived as micromanagement?

Svarty.8019:

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium.

Do you think the alteration of the number of silk scraps required per bolt could be perceived as micromanagement?

Nope. Micromanaging something, or someone, is vastly different than making a one time adjustment.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No, he’s saying that there are two separate issues the complaints are based on. Either your core complaint is the price of Silk, or your complaint is the direct availability of Silk.

In truth, it’s neither. I do complain against both, but mainly as a consequence of more general problem of availability of cloth mats for ascended armor crafting.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

So in the case of it being available – If you were given a direct source to farm Silk, but the price remained the same as it is, would you still complain?

Most likely yes – after all, the price is a byproduct of effort needed to get it, and currently the effort required to get enough cloth mats for a light armor is ridiculously high – especially when compared to effort required to get metal/leather mats for other armor weight categories. A “solution” that does not address that point is no solution at all. Being able to get cloth more consistently would be, in itself, a good thing, but John Smith’s question seems to suggest that this good thing would be “balanced” negatively up to a point where the change wouldn’t really change anything.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The opposite would be – If the price were low, but you didn’t have a direct source to farm Silk, would you still complain?

Yes. TP should never be a primary source for anything. It should be something only for those that do not want to put the effort (or lack the skill) to get the goods directly.
In other words, if you want to craft things on your own, using mats you have gathered yourself, you should be able to do so without the game reminding you painfully that you should just farm gold instead.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

Well I think it’s not that you have to farm it it’s how it happens. If you removed the need for the double RNG with the sacks of goods across all gathering and made it so that salvaging was the preferred method of obtaining these materials I think it would be less of a problem because the bags have double RNG in them, there’s a chance to get the bag and there’s a chance to get the items you need from the bags.

We get blues and greens constantly with other methods of farming such as finding chests at the end of jump puzzles or hidden throughout Tyria, surely there’s a way of making salvaging more useful so that farming bags wouldn’t be required, I think that would help the rewards system alot because it would make it as if people wouldn’t notice that they are farming it would just happen in the background while they are picking up loot rather going out and doing specific things ad nauseum such as farming gold.

Also I think making some of these items use (as it is now) useless leather types that you can’t sell on the market right now for anything would make a big change especially if it were balanced so that salvaging would produce a similar number of those leather types and then of course you would change the other crafting systems to include leather rather than having all three armor types globally use silk, this would be the way I’d handle it that way the price for these items would be the same, salvaging would be the preferred method of getting those (so there would be a use for the rest of the world chests again filled with greens and blues oh and the veterans) and those people who are chronically affected by DR wouldn’t have an issue getting the materials we need.

Anet may have internal specs on where they believe each item should be valued at. That doesn’t mean all T5 needs to be the same, or that all T6 should be the same. Through their data, they can correctly predict where each item value falls. It’s not through code changes that made Powerful Venom Sacs fall in value, while Elaborate Totems increased. It’s through players as a whole who changed metas, therefore changed demand for certain materials.

But it’s not players that actually change anything. It’s players reacting to changes that ANet made. If the price of some material goes up, it’s because either ANet made it less convenient to acquire that material, reducing natural supply, or because ANet added a new use for the item, increasing natural demand, without balancing that change out on the other side. You can’t blame the players if the price of silk goes up because ANet adds Damask Bolts at 100 silk per, and doesn’t add new supply sufficient to compensate for that, for example.

Prices never change except in reaction to a choice ANet has made. If ANet make no further changes to the game, the prices of everything would level off and remain constant.

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

As I said, there would certainly be fluctuations, nobody is expecting them to always have the exact same prices to within 1% difference or anything, but they should always be comparably close. There’s no rational reason why cured thick leather squares are at 27c per, and a bolt of silk, ostensibly a material of equivalent value, should be at 723c. That’s almost exponentially more expensive! Nor is there a good reason for Gossamer to be barely more than 1/10th the cost of Silk, or Linen to be 150% the price of Silk.

Like I said, nobody is expecting them to be micromanaged to the point that they retain an absolute fixed price, but would it be too much to ask that a system be maintained in which the following is always true (aside from brief corrective swings):

Within a single material type: T6>T5>T4>T3>T2>T1

Between the three material types: Tx of material A > Tx-1 of Material B and < Tx+1 of Material B?

Now, maybe Cured Leather would only be slightly more valued than Linen, rather than quite the same value as Silk, but it should still be more valuable than Linen by some amount, and Linen should definitely not be more valuable than Silk.

It’s silly that anything less would be considered acceptable. Making a full set of cloth armor should never be significantly more expensive than a full set of equivalent leather armor, and making a single item that can be made in all three crafts using different materials should never cost significantly more in one than in the others (ie it should never cost a Tailor significantly more to craft the item than it would cost a Leatherworker).

Ohoni.6057:

That’s almost exponentially more expensive!

Can one of you economy buffs tell me what this means?

John Smith.4610:

Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

Looks like someone forgot to eat his turkey sandwich this morning and is not up to the task.

Pffff…..

I’ve seen some good criticism of the status quo (and some not so good). Some good defense of it, too (and yeah, some not so good).

What I haven’t seen yet is a suggestion for how to change the status quo without doing something predictably horrid to the economy and/or risking mass rage-quitting of all those who already have their ascended armor.

Changing the number of silk scraps needed for bolts upends the demand, as would changing the number of silk bolts required for damask (although that’s easier to tweak). People have already been up in arms about the game’s minor tweak to the amount of light armor that drops for light-armored-profs.

I suspect the only thing that ANet could do to slowly change the current equilibrium is to make tiny changes to the amount of cloth scraps that drop from salvaging armor and salvage items. Currently, things like rags and garments (e.g. frayed rags, frayed garments) drop ~1.8 scraps of one sort or another, torso armor drops ~3 scraps, and non-torso ~2. (my personal data, not necessarily reflective of the true rates)

Herr Doktor Smith: what about upping those ratios by 10% or so, to 1.9, 3.3, and 2.2 respectively? (pretending that my numbers are even close to accurate)

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.

Ground turkey burgers are great, though I tend to cover them with pineapple & teriyaki more often than I do beef burgers. It’s a popular burger flavor I find just works better with ground turkey.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

My feeling is outside of any economic impact — as a game-play experience — it would be better. As something of a do-it-yourselfer, I still remember making Infinite Light… There is more pleasure/pride in the memory of slowly but personally gathering 50-ish of the Charged Lodestones than I have for the memory of the 200-ish lodestones that I produced by buying cores from the Trading Post and upgrading in the Mystic Forge.

One had me getting into groups to run the Crucible of Eternity and out in Orr ruthlessly exterminating every elemental (I was on a first name basis with all of them. Many said ‘hi’ and waved to me before we began our epic battles). The ones I bought were just “Yay, I threw some coin at the market. Watch how I cunningly manage my bids…. Zzzzzzz”

The trading post is a good tool, and I’ll say without hesitation it is the best run one I’ve ever seen in 15 years of playing MMOs… but its sometimes used as a cure-all for a lack of path → goal in the main gameplay. Every time I hear “Its easier to go farm gold and buy it” I just cringe, because SOMEBODY has to actually undertake the activities that puts the item into the game rather than just adding to the amount of coin floating around. Its very hard to deliberately be the guy introducing the items to the market.

Wanze.8410:

Ohoni.6057:

That’s almost exponentially more expensive!

Can one of you economy buffs tell me what this means?

Hey look who popped his head up still quoting people without their names. I have no idea what hes saying here.